“The Library of Babel,” by Jorge Luis Borges, explores the concept of a universal library, containing every text that could possibly be written in every possible language. One thing that stands out from Borges’ text is the fact that the existence of a single, universal library presents inherent problems. One of these difficulties involves the effort to locate a desired text. This is suggested when, for example, people search desperately for their own “vindications” only to discover that “the possibility of a man’s finding his Vindication, or some treacherous variation thereof, can be computed as zero.” In Borges’ story, individuals seem lost in this vast library, searching endlessly for particular texts, only to come full circle and end up right back where they started.
Geoffrey Nunberg addresses similar challenges in regards to Google’s Books Library Project which, inspired by the same concept, is comparable to Borges’ “The Library of Babel.” As in Borges’ story, the effort to obtain certain texts using Google’s Books Project seems equally fruitless. For example, a search for texts published before 1812 will produce records on Greta Garbo, Woody Allen, and even Barrack Obama, despite the fact that these people weren’t born until a much later date. Furthermore, there are classification issues, such as when an edition of Moby Dick is labeled under the category of Computers. Then, once the desired text has been obtained, one may only find that it has been corrupted during the scanning process, after which the search process must be started all over again.
While the idea of a universal library immediately accessible from your own computer seems initially appealing, Borges and Nunberg cast some serious doubt on such a concept. With the entirety of the world’s literature in a single location, how does one actually locate a specific text in such a vast ocean of potential records? Furthermore, once the alleged text has been obtained, how does one know if it is original and hasn’t been corrupted by some faulty scanning process? (In fact, it seems that we have already encountered this problem with some of our required course material. :-))
